In Rhode Island, lying online is no longer a crime

The state repealed an obscure 1989 law forbidding fudging facts online.

Rhode Island state law makers voted this month to repeal an obscure 1989 law that forbid spreading untruths online, and punished scofflaws with a misdemeanor charge and a $500 fine.

The law was enacted to stop scammers and con artists from preying on the denizens of the then-tiny Internet. But it also weirdly included over-broad language that, "outlawed the 'transmission of false data' regardless of whether liars stood to profit from their deception or not," reported the Associated Press.

This meant that announcing you were the Lizard King, or claiming someone's mother loved bears a little too much, or telling the good people of Match.com that you're blonde when you're really brunette, would earn you a criminal record. The Associated Press says only a few people were ever prosecuted under the absurd law; the most recent case was in 2010, when a prison guard made a fake Facebook account to impersonate his boss. The man lost his job, but the charges were dropped, and the case spurred Rhode Island lawmakers to let 'Net-surfing Rhode Islanders weave more tangled Webs.

The law used to be found in Section 11-52-7 of the Rhode Island General Laws concerning Computer Crime. While it's still illegal to lie online in order to defraud people out of their money, the bill striking the more general prohibition on the transmission of false data was passed in the Rhode Island State House and Senate and signed by Governor Lincoln Chafee.

Luckily, Rhode Island is taking more rational steps to approaching the dubious nature of facts on the Internet than others. Recently, one of China's most popular social media sites introduced a points system where people too frequently found spreading "untruths" get kicked off the service. But for the moment, while all these Rhode Islanders are drunk on their new freedom, we should take all of their status updates with a grain of salt.

32 Reader Comments

The Associated Press says only a few people were ever prosecuted under the absurd law; the most recent case was in 2010, when a prison guard made a fake Facebook account to impersonate his boss. The man lost his job, but the charges were dropped, and the case spurred Rhode Island lawmakers to let 'net-surfing Rhode Islanders weave more tangled Webs.

A $500 fine dosen't seem all that harsh, for a journalist blatantly spreading miss-information.

It sounded like a law designed to be brought forth in large batches. A single fraudulent post, to seem legit, would contain lies stacked upon lies. They probably envisioned charging people with a minimum of a dozen counts of it or not bothering to file charges at all.

Rhode Island state law makers voted this month to repeal an obscure 1989 law that forbid spreading untruths online, and punished scoff-laws with a misdemeanor charge and a $500 fine.

The law was enacted to stop scammers and con artists from preying on the denizens of the newly-founded Web.

Heh...wasn't the World Wide Web formally proposed in mid-to-late 1990? If so, this law was probably intended to protect BBS users and Newsgroup people back in the day :-)

Ah, good call, I'll clarify.

The first browser (WorldWideWeb from Berners-Lee) came out in 1990, although it probably did not have more than a handful of users. The first graphical browser (Mosaic, developed into Netscape) came out in 1993. IE didn't come out until 1995.

Rhode Island state law makers voted this month to repeal an obscure 1989 law that forbid spreading untruths online, and punished scoff-laws with a misdemeanor charge and a $500 fine.

The law was enacted to stop scammers and con artists from preying on the denizens of the newly-founded Web.

Heh...wasn't the World Wide Web formally proposed in mid-to-late 1990? If so, this law was probably intended to protect BBS users and Newsgroup people back in the day :-)

Hey now, people took their TradeWars 2002 games very seriously back in the day!

@Smitty825 - You are correct - there was no WWW in 1989. However Megan clearly uses the terminology "online" and "Internet" in the article in reference to that timeframe. So she is in fact correct. The Internet and the WWW are 2 wholly and seperate things entirely.

@Donnicton - TradeWars was the BEST. LOL. I wasted more time playing that - not sure how I ever graduated college.

Quote:

Rhode Island state law makers voted this month to repeal an obscure 1989 law that forbid spreading untruths online, and punished scoff-laws with a misdemeanor charge and a $500 fine.

How would this have been enforceable ?

Especially back in the late 80s early 90s. IF you were not Governement or Education back then - more likely than not you were using a screename and not plastering "online" (laughable) locations with your real credentials.

And going thru BBSes back then - there were no IP Addy's for tracking - so they'd be stuck doing it the hard way with phoneline tracing (and warrants) - only after the initial occurance and doing basically a dragnet fishing expedition in hopes that a specific User would return.

I guess in RI, you can't even pretend there are girls on the internet.Too bad no one used these laws to go after foxnews.com while they had the chance....

I'm no fan of Fox but lets not act like they would be the only ones snared by this. Many other conservative and liberal think tanks would be snared by this as well.

Well, since it was a joke, I think it's perfectly fine to act like that. Besides, fox news is hardly a "think tank" - it's a mouthpiece.But if you want to get real, fox news clearly has the highest public awareness of prolific lying and blatant propaganda spreading since Goebbels, while foxnews.com specifically does this online, which is related to the article.I doubt most people could even name very many "think tanks", and the only think tanks I'm aware of that regularly spread lies and misinformation are definitely conservative or paid by conservatives.

I guess in RI, you can't even pretend there are girls on the internet.Too bad no one used these laws to go after foxnews.com while they had the chance....

I'm no fan of Fox but lets not act like they would be the only ones snared by this. Many other conservative and liberal think tanks would be snared by this as well.

Basically, the most extreme of both ends would get prosecuted. to me, that is a win/win for everyone.

Okay, it's my damn joke, and I say fox only.But I'll play: how do you define the "extreme" right? Because if it's stormfront or aryan nation or some such, that's not exactly on the radar here. I define it as fox news and the tea-tards and Scott Walker and his ilk, and therefore there isn't really anybody on the right who isn't extreme to the point of dangerous delusion. If you know of any right-leaning centrists, please elaborate. Furthermore, who exactly are you referring to as the extreme left (in the US)? And what specific lies have they told? Because fox news' lies and those of the right are well documented and are well proven to be blatant on a daily basis, to the point that they seem to lie sometimes solely for the sake of consistency. The point is, fox news stands out in a sea of doublespeak and political rhetoric for blatantly telling outright lies and plain old making shit up, and the same just isn't true of the left. Right-wingnuts and those ignorant of current events make sweeping generalizations such as "the left does it too" and "you can't trust any politicians" and "all news is propaganda", but none of them seem to come up with any specific examples of these transgressions from the left that aren't actually made-up lies to begin with. If you can prove otherwise I'd like to hear it.If not, well, STFU. It's my joke and it's fox news.

I think this is a win for free speech. Fraud will still remain a crime, but the government gets out of most random disputes that exist. Let civil courts figure out certain individual disputes. I think that free speech is really under attack lately with the government trying to shut down file sharers, wikileaks type of sites that attack the government's power center, cesspools like http://www.dirtyphonebook.com and 4chan being out there and causing some people to change their minds on free speech. The government should not exist to make a law for every conceivable happenstance that might ever happen - if it is to exist its role should be to protect property rights and nothing else.